We are at the start of the 2016-2017 school year and the start of the third year of the Social Symbolism class; my students have nicknamed the class "SoS".
The Social Symbol class has been working on executive functioning skills (e.g., setting up and keeping an agenda), what to put in agendas and WHY these skills are important to develop and use. I have already had one student say to me that, "I didn't know why this was important until you taught me why." If we ask students to "do" things without teaching the "why", then they are only complying and NOT learning. The "WHY" is just as important!
We have also been learning skills based on the Social Thinking Curriculum created by Michelle Garcia Winner and Pamela Crooke; which is what the course curriculum is based off of. The topics we started the year with include "expected and unexpected behaviors", flexible thinking vs. rigid thinking, communication skills (e.g., people/friend files), and friends (e.g., friends, friendly acquaintances, "others', and mean people).
The Freshman Class of 2020 will attend an activity fair this week; all the clubs that represent the wide variety of extracurricular activities will be there. One of the requirements for the Social Symbolism class is that each student must participate in at least one extracurricular activity of their choosing. The reason for this "requirement" is that this particular class is a "skills-based" class; the skills they learn in class need to be practiced outside of class. Please talk to your child about which extracurricular activities they are interested in attending.
Our class will also be participating in an upcoming field trip to Project Adventure, where the students will be able to demonstrate their knowledge of social communication skills, including using flexible thinking, that they are learning in class by using them in various structured activities. Please strongly encourage your child to participate in this field trip!
Since I also stress the importance of setting a goal within the context of executive functioning skills with my students, I will do the same! My goal is to write at least one blog post a month during the school year. I have written ideas for blog posts in my agenda (e.g., plan), so now all I will have to "do" is write... so here we go! One blog post down, (at least) eight more to go!
